Goethe and Klopstock: A Last Word

ABSTRACT This article examines the influence of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock on the poetry of the young Johann Wolfgang Goethe, tracing Goethe’s brief but intense relationship with the older poet by looking at well-known examples such as ‘Auf dem See’ and noting correspondences and above all differences. A further example of Klopstock’s influence is the early dramatic fragment Mahomet. There, the themes both of Klopstock’s poetry, but also of his epic Der Messias (1748–73), are discernible. A detailed examination and comparison of idyllic passages from Der Messias and Goethe’s early poem ‘Der Wandrer’ reveal this process of assimilation, but also Goethe’s growing independence.